Reviving the Ancient Faith, 3rd ed.: The Story of Churches of Christ in America

By Richard T. Hughes and James L. Gorman

A balanced, well-documented history of the Churches of Christ in America 
 
The Churches of Christ is a denomination defined by not being a denomination. These communities intended to restore a primitive Christianity, undivided by historical quarrels. 
 
Despite this ideal, the Churches of Christ in America have a surprisingly complex history dating back to the nineteenth century. James L. Gorman’s fresh edition of Richard T. Hughes’s classic work, Reviving the Ancient Faith, illuminates the movement started by Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell. The authors trace the movement’s sociological transformation into a denomination from the 1830s into the twentieth century. Four developments forged this new identity: the premillennialist controversy, the divide over institutions, the racial segregation of congregations and schools, and the fight over liberalism in the 1960s. New to the third edition, the final chapters bring the history of Churches of Christ from the 1960s up to 2022, analyzing the growing diversity of the movement amid intradenominational “culture wars.”
 
Reviving the Ancient Faith, 3rd edition, challenges readers to learn the historical basis of Church of Christ identity and beliefs. Students of the history of the Church of Christ and American religion will derive from its pages a more holistic and informed understanding of the tradition.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Release date: Jan 11, 2024
• ISBN: 9781467468091

Richard T. Hughes

Richard T. Hughes is scholar in residence at Lipscomb University. He is the author of several books, including Myths America Lives By: White Supremacy and the Stories That Give Us Meaning and The Churches of Christ: Student Edition.

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Front Cover of Reviving the Ancient Faith, 3rd ed.Half Title of Reviving the Ancient Faith, 3rd ed.Book Title of Reviving the Ancient Faith, 3rd ed.

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

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© 2024 Richard T. Hughes and James L. Gorman

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Published 2024

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Printed in the United States of America

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ISBN 978-0-8028-7729-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

For Jan and AJ

and

For Heather, Anna, and Elise

CONTENTS

List of Abbreviations

Preface to the Third Edition

Preface to the First Edition

Introduction: The Character of Churches of Christ

PART ONE: THe MAKING OF A SECT

1. The Rise and Radicalization of Alexander Campbell

2. The Apocalyptic Outlook of Churches of Christ

PART TWO: THE MAKING OF A DENOMINATION

3. Decline of Apocalypticism and Rise of Christian America

4. Grace, Law, and Competing Journalism Styles

5. The Fight over Modernization

6. Segregation and Independence of Black Churches of Christ

PART THREE: THE FRAGMENTATION OF A DENOMINATION

7. Fragmentation Left and Right in the 1960s and 1970s

8. Renewal, Reform, and Resistance from the 1970s to the 1990s

9. Identity Crisis amid Decline in the Twenty-First Century

Glossary

Notes

Bibliography

ABBREVIATIONS

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

WHEN RICHARD HUGHES AND TREVOR THOMPSON ASKED if I was interested in completing a third edition of Reviving the Ancient Faith, an initial welling of pride quickly gave way to trepidation about retaining the scholarly and interpretive quality of the first edition. I have not lightly undertaken this work. The book was never meant to be a comprehensive history of Churches of Christ. Instead, Hughes sought to produce a book that would explain the character of Churches of Christ—who they are and how they have changed over the years from one stage to another. That objective has remained constant through the third edition.

Like Hughes, I have had close ties to Churches of Christ throughout my life, and my relationship is complicated, as I have also been a member of independent Christian Churches and institutions over the last twenty years. Yet, as a historian, I follow Hughes’s attempt in the first edition to resist the temptation to tell only the good about one’s own tradition, to negate the bad, and to make the story look better than perhaps it really is. As in the first edition, I have tried in the new sections of the book to tell an honest story and read sources charitably.

This third edition has three major goals: (1) to bring the history up to 2022, (2) to update the text of the first edition to include new scholarship, and (3) to reduce the overall word count. A few principles for exclusion and inclusion have guided my way. First, I have not changed the major arguments, but I have added nuance from scholarship over the last thirty years. Second, I have trimmed the notes to include only those sources essential to the argument. Third, I have included about half the number of images of the first edition and shortened their accompanying text, though most of the images are new.

I have also added a third part to the book, framed as fragmentation among Churches of Christ from the 1960s to the 2020s. I explain those three parts in the introduction, but I have retained the sociological interpretive framework, arguing for a progression now of sect to denomination to fragmentation. There are only nine chapters now, as I have combined and condensed some chapters. Further, I have added a completely new chapter on the twenty-first century (chap. 9) and a partly new chapter on African American Churches of Christ (chap. 6), and I have added substantially to chapter 8, on the period from the 1970s to the 1990s.

Many people have read parts of the new material and provided helpful feedback. These people include Frank Bellizzi, Wes Crawford, Doug Foster, Terry Gardner, Charles Gorman, Heather Gorman, John Mark Hicks, Richard Hughes, Corey Markum, Kathy Pulley, Edward Robinson, Steve Wolfgang, and John Young. I am also indebted to members of the Stone-Campbell Google Group, whose brainstorming in 2016 helped kick-start research questions for chapter 9, and whose responses to questions over the last several years helped me enormously. For help at various stages along the way, I thank my Johnson University teaching assistants Charity Beam, Jordan Kirsch, and Noah Taylor.

Archivists and other individuals helped me locate pictures to use in this edition, including Mac Ice at Abilene Christian University (ACU), Shelley Jacobs at Disciples of Christ Historical Society, Kelsey Knox at Pepperdine University, Jessica Holland at Harding School of Theology, Hannah Wood at Harding University, Amanda Fisher at Baylor University, Terry Gardner, Amy Bost Henegar, Jerry Taylor, D’Esta Love, and Sally Gary.

I am grateful to Mac Ice and Erica Pye at ACU’s Brown Library for helping me create the Churches of Christ in the Twenty-First Century Oral History Project, which is now available to the public at ACU’s digitalcommons. The many individuals and historians I interviewed for that project provided clarity and rich texture to the stories I tell in chapters 8 and 9.

This book would never have happened without the support of my institution, Johnson University. I am especially thankful for my dean, Gary Stratton, and assistant deans, April Conley Kilinski and Jason Mead, for constantly advocating for my research agenda. I am grateful to Johnson University for a sabbatical in the spring and summer of 2022, which gave me the time to finish researching and writing the book.

I am deeply thankful to Richard Hughes. I appreciate his willingness to let me run with the third edition. I will look back fondly on our meetings in Cookeville, Tennessee, the halfway point between our houses in Franklin and Knoxville, to discuss my ideas, his feedback, and life. I am also indebted to Trevor Thompson for his interest in getting the project started, and to the Eerdmans team for trusting me to revise this important book. I hope this third edition provokes newfound interest in this fascinating religious tradition.

I am most grateful for my family. Heather, Anna, and Elise are extraordinary gifts who make everyday life full of wonder, excitement, and love. I hope some of those qualities worked their way into the stories told here.

James L. Gorman

October 14, 2022

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

FOURTEEN YEARS AGO, in 1981, Greenwood Press asked me to write a history of Churches of Christ for their Denominations in America series. Greenwood intends for that series to be a collection of reference volumes in which the narrative of each volume will be a summary and overview of central themes in the history of a given tradition. The book I finally produced, however, was a monograph, much longer than Greenwood wanted. Greenwood therefore granted the William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company permission to publish this monograph in a paperbound edition, and I agreed to furnish Greenwood with the reference volume they want at a later date. The narrative of that volume will be roughly half the size of this book, and it will be joined to an extensive section of biographical sketches authored by R. L. Roberts.

I mention this because the original agreement with Greenwood has determined to a great extent the nature of the present volume. I never set out to write a history of Churches of Christ the centerpiece of which would be an abundance of facts—names, dates, and places. Instead, from the beginning I sought to produce a book that would explain the character of Churches of Christ—who they are and why, and how they have changed over the years from one stage to another. That objective has remained constant over the past fourteen years.

Writing this book has not been an easy task. I am a lifelong member of Churches of Christ but also a historian of American religion. Those two commitments have pulled at one another in a variety of ways over the years that this book has been in production. One’s allegiance to one’s own tradition always prompts one to tell only the good, to negate the bad, and to make the story look better than perhaps it really is. As a historian, however, I had to resist that temptation. I have tried in this book to tell the truth as I see it. The book is not without interpretations, though I have sought to inform those interpretations by seriously engaging the extensive literature produced by Churches of Christ for almost two hundred years.

I owe a great debt of gratitude to many people who have contributed to this volume in a variety of ways over the years. When I first signed the contract with Greenwood Press in 1981, I was teaching at Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield. My dean, Holt V. Spicer, and department chair, Gerrit J. tenZythoff, graciously offered to grant me a leave of absence to launch this project if I could raise financial support for a year. A number of people contributed to that support, including Mr. and Mrs. Bill H. Branch of Roanoke, Virginia; Dr. and Mrs. Quinton Dickerson and Mr. and Mrs. J. C. Redd of Jackson, Mississippi; Mr. and Mrs. Dwain Evans, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Fitts, Mr. and Mrs. Joe Foy, Dr. and Mrs. Norman Garner, Mr. and Mrs. David S. Holland, Dr. and Mrs. Terry Koonce, Dr. and Mrs. Bill Love, and Mr. and Mrs. Robert Norris, all of Houston, Texas; Dr. and Mrs. Claude Hocott of Austin, Texas; Mr. and Mrs. Ray McGlothlin of Abilene, Texas; and the Church of Christ of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

I owe a special debt of gratitude to Dr. William J. Teague, then president of Abilene Christian University (ACU), who graciously offered to name me Scholar-in-Residence at ACU for the 1982–1983 academic year, thereby making me eligible for a library office and other support services at that institution. I therefore undertook this project in the bowels of the Herman and Margaret Brown Library at Abilene Christian University. The following year I accepted an offer to teach at Abilene Christian. President Teague extended the Scholar-in-Residence designation on a half-time basis for the 1983–1984 and 1986–1988 academic years, thereby enabling me to make even further progress on this book.

In the fall of 1988, my family and I left Texas for California and returned to the institution where I began my teaching career in 1971, Pepperdine University. I took up my old position there as professor of the history of Christianity. I am grateful to four Pepperdine University students, Chad Huddleston, Ron Cox, Margaret Smith, and Carl Flynn, who helped in a variety of ways on this project. I am also grateful to Pepperdine University for a grant that freed me from teaching responsibilities for the summer of 1990 and to the Pew Charitable Trusts for a grant in 1990 that freed me from teaching responsibilities for an additional semester, thereby enabling me to move this history even further toward completion.

I am especially grateful to the following persons for their skillful photographic reproduction: Ron Hall of Pepperdine University, David England of David Lipscomb University, and Jami West of Abilene Christian University.

Terry and Beverly Koonce have supported my work financially from the beginning, making possible extended research over several summers both at Abilene Christian University and the Harding University Graduate School of Bible and Religion in Memphis, Tennessee. Words cannot express my gratitude to the staffs of those two libraries. I am especially indebted in that regard to R. L. Roberts, retired archivist in the Center for Restoration Studies at the ACU library, and to Don Meredith, director of the library at the Harding Graduate School.

R. L. Roberts, in particular, has been my mentor for all these years, guiding me into the proper sources and suggesting helpful interpretations. When I took a year’s leave of absence from Southwest Missouri State University in 1982–1983, I seriously thought I would research and write the book in that one year. I shall never forget Roberts’s words the first day I encountered him in the ACU library and explained to him my zealous intentions. Not so fast, he said. Indeed, it has not been fast. Fourteen years has been a very long time, but the task has been rewarding.

Many people have read portions of the manuscript at various stages along the way and made extremely helpful comments and suggestions, many of which have been incorporated into the final manuscript. These people include Leonard Allen, Dan Anders, Judy Anders, Molefe Kete Asante, David Baird, Calvin Bowers, Walter Burch, Fran Carver, Michael Casey, John Allen Chalk, Dan Danner, Dwain Evans, Harry Robert Fox, Anne Frashier, Loyd Frashier, Edward Fudge, Leroy Garrett, Fred Gray, Andrew Hairston, David Edwin Harrell Jr., Don Haymes, Samuel S. Hill, Bill Jenkins, David Jones, Eugene Lawton, Steven Lemley, Hubert G. Locke, Bill Love, William Martin, Martin Marty, Lester McAllister, Rob McRay, Lynn Mitchell, Tom Olbricht, Roy Osborne, Kathy Pulley, Robert M. Randolph, R. L. Roberts, Jerry Rushford, J. Harold Thomas, Grant Wacker, and Dewayne Winrow.

In particular, I would like to thank my editor at William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Tim Straayer, who made innumerable excellent suggestions regarding the composition of the text; Charles Van Hof, managing editor at Eerdmans, who made the process of publication extraordinarily pleasant from beginning to end; and Henry Bowden, general editor of the Greenwood Press Denominations in America series, who has encouraged me regarding this project at every step along the way.

In the end, however, only I am responsible for the shortcomings of this volume.

I am especially grateful to my wife, Janice, and my son, Andy, who have borne with this project for fourteen years. It has altered the shape of our lives in a variety of ways for all those years. It has meant upheaval in the form of two moves, taking us halfway across the United States, and it has meant certain summer months away from home and long hours in the office.

Jan, however, has not only borne with this project but participated at every step along the way as I have shared with her my ideas and interpretations and as she, in turn, has shared with me insights that have consistently proven helpful and productive.

Introduction

THE CHARACTER OF CHURCHES OF CHRIST

THIS BOOK IS A HISTORY of Churches of Christ in the United States, but that statement requires qualification. Over the years, Churches of Christ have divided and subdivided to such an extent that the leading data collector lists ten different fellowship groups among Churches of Christ—and those ten do not include the racial and ethnic groups such as African American Churches of Christ that probably constitute separate fellowship groups. Together, the various wings of Churches of Christ included about 1,447,000 adherents in 2018.¹

Through that maze of diversity, this volume seeks to follow the majority, mainstream tradition of the movement while taking seriously the premillennial movement, noninstitutional Churches of Christ, the Black Churches of Christ, and the International Churches of Christ, even as none of the latter of these traditions stands at the heart of this volume. Instead, this book is principally about the White mainstream Churches of Christ that traces its US heritage to Barton W. Stone and Alexander Campbell in the early nineteenth century and that, in the twentieth century, has thrived especially in a region running from Middle Tennessee to West Texas. At the same time, particularly when dealing with the twentieth century, the story of mainstream Churches of Christ is told from the viewpoint of various dissenting streams of this tradition—a point clarified later in this introduction.

Four major themes have shaped the character of this tradition from its nineteenth-century beginnings. First, the defining characteristic of Churches of Christ throughout their history was the notion of the restoration of primitive Christianity—the attempt to recover in the modern age the Christian faith as it was believed and practiced in the first century. This vision flourished especially in the heady, utopian climate of the early nineteenth century when Churches of Christ in America first began. Many Americans of that period, deeply impressed with the glories of the new nation and of the land it occupied, imagined that a golden age was near, perhaps even the final triumph of the kingdom of God. In that context, a number of religious movements dedicated themselves to recovering primitive Christianity in all its purity and perfection. The two most notable manifestations of that impulse in the antebellum period were the Churches of Christ and the Latter-day Saints, though these two traditions took that impulse in very different directions.² Throughout this book, the term primitivism refers to this attempt to recover the ancient Christian faith.

Second, Churches of Christ began as a sect in the early nineteenth century and evolved into a denomination during the twentieth century.³ This would hardly be striking, or even very interesting, had not Churches of Christ passionately rejected the labels sect and denomination as pertinent to their own identity. Indeed, their resolute rejection of these labels has been central to what Churches of Christ have been about for almost two hundred years. Since their denial of these categories flies in the face of social reality, their story is one of deep irony and absorbing interest.

Often, adherents have argued that they restored the primitive church of the apostolic age and are therefore nothing more or less than the true, original church described in the New Testament. For this reason, Churches of Christ generally have denied that they had a defining history other than the Bible itself and have traditionally expressed little interest in their particular history in the United States. Many members remain to this day virtually ignorant of Campbell, the early nineteenth-century leader who helped give shape and texture to this movement in its founding years.

What is more, many of these same people studiously avoid learning about Campbell or any other important leader from their past: they fear that to acknowledge dependence on any human leader would make them a denomination with a human founder rather than the true, primitive church founded by Christ. This unique self-understanding has served to create institutional identity out of a denial of institutional identity, and it has shaped the history and character of Churches of Christ in countless and often paradoxical ways. The material presented in this book substantiates the assertion made elsewhere that churches who root their identity in efforts to restore ancient Christianity are susceptible to the illusion that they have escaped the influence of history and culture altogether.⁴

Third, this book argues that the nineteenth-century sectarian character of Churches of Christ drew from two first-generation leaders, not one. To the extent that scholars and members of Churches of Christ have acknowledged their history, most have assumed that the tradition is indebted mainly to Campbell. While acknowledging Campbell’s significance, this book argues that Stone was equally important for shaping this tradition. One cannot understand the history and character of Churches of Christ unless one understands the thought and contributions of both men and their followers.

Fourth, this book explores the different ways that Campbell and Stone understood the Christian message and oriented themselves to the world in which they lived. These differences contributed not only to the character of Churches of Christ but also to divisions that ruptured this movement, both in the nineteenth and in the twentieth century.

Three terms are pertinent in this context: apocalypticism, postmillennialism, and premillennialism. Since Campbell embraced a highly optimistic view of the world, we will refer to his outlook as postmillennial, though historian Douglas Foster has shown Campbell’s inconsistency on this and other ideas—Campbell’s optimism sometimes gave way to pessimism.⁵ Like many Americans living in the early nineteenth century, Campbell typically imagined that human progress would usher in the kingdom or rule of God (the millennium) and that Jesus would return only at the conclusion of that golden age. Thus, he believed that Jesus’s second coming would be postmillennial.

Stone, on the other hand, by the 1830s had embraced a very pessimistic understanding of the world.⁶ We refer to Stone’s perspective as apocalyptic. Apocalypticism in this context does not necessarily involve millennial theories or speculation regarding the time of the second coming. Instead, it signifies an outlook on life whereby believers lived their lives as if the final rule of the kingdom of God were present in the here and now. Stone and many who looked to him for leadership denied that human progress could contribute anything at all to the creation of the kingdom of God on this earth. By the end of Stone’s life, they gave their unqualified allegiance to God’s rule and rejected allegiance to human governments and to the popular values of the culture in which they lived. This outlook gave their activities a radical, even countercultural dimension. Historians describing what we refer to as apocalypticism have also used the terms social alienation, cultural separatism, and sojourner mentality.⁷

While we do not use the term apocalypticism in reference to any particular theory about the millennium or the final golden age, it is nonetheless true that Stone and many of his people at times embraced a decidedly premillennial reading of human history. They believed that this world could not become the kingdom of God unless and until God himself ordained it. Many therefore held that the world could not be renewed until Christ himself returned to establish his millennial rule on earth. Thus they believed the second coming of Christ would be premillennial, or prior to the final golden age.

Again, the reader should not confuse our use of the term apocalyptic with premillennial perspectives. While apocalyptic thinking has often given rise to premillennial perspectives, the two are not the same. Nonetheless, chapter 3 does argue that the attack on premillennialism within Churches of Christ did contribute to a weakening of apocalypticism. That chapter explores the complex context in which premillennialism and apocalypticism related. In sum, we use the phrase apocalyptic worldview or the term apocalypticism in this book to refer to the kind of piety that led Stone and many of his followers to place themselves directly under the rule of God and to refuse to conform themselves to the values of the world.

UNDERSTANDING THE NONDENOMINATIONAL IDEAL

In addition to these key terms, we must also understand at the outset what it means to say that Churches of Christ began as a sect and evolved into a denomination but denied that they were either. This is a critical consideration, since the transition from sect to denomination, along with the persistent refusal of Churches of Christ to acknowledge and come to terms with that transition, is one of the central stories in the history of this tradition. In fact, the conviction of its members that Churches of Christ constituted no denomination at all, but had recovered instead the purity of the primitive Christian communities, has been, until the late twentieth century, its most important defining characteristic.

During the 1960s, Churches of Christ promoted a tract entitled Neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Jew that illustrates this point well. Translated into French, German, and Arabic, this widely distributed tract proclaimed that the church of Christ is neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Jewish. It continued, We are unique and different for we are endeavoring to go all the way back to the original New Testament church. Using the New Testament as our blueprint we have re-established in the twentieth century Christ’s church. It fits no modern label. It is not just another denomination.⁸ We need to be clear, therefore, about what we mean by the terms sect and denomination and about what Churches of Christ have meant when they have spoken of nondenominational Christianity.

According to common understanding in the broad Christian context, the term sect refers to any segment of the universal body of Christ that regards itself as the total body of Christ. This understanding of the term is pertinent, since Churches of Christ for most of their history have regarded themselves as the whole of the body of Christ. On the other hand, the term denomination is commonly used to refer to a segment of the universal body of Christ that recognizes itself as a segment and confesses itself to be a segment. When applied to Churches of Christ, this understanding of denomination can be deceptive, since Churches of Christ have until recently verbally denied denominational status, but for most of the twentieth century they have behaved as though they were a part of the larger whole.

To unravel this knotty situation, we need to explore these terms from a sociological perspective.⁹ When used in their classic, sociological sense, the terms church, denomination, and sect signify social realities, not theological ideals. Sociologically speaking, the term church refers to a legally established ecclesiastical institution. In that sense, there is no church in the United States at all: the First Amendment to the Constitution places all religious communities on an equal footing before the law and leaves them existing somewhere on a continuum between sect and denomination.

A sect stands over against the dominant culture because it views itself as the exclusive domain of both truth and salvation, from which it maintains that other religious bodies and the culture at large have departed. Moreover, it is often bellicose in the prophetic judgments it hurls against the culture and its handmaidens, the popular denominations. This was precisely the way Churches of Christ understood themselves and behaved—at least in part—in the nineteenth century.

A denomination, on the other hand, has typically made its peace with the dominant culture, abandoned its exclusivist rhetoric, muted its prophetic voice, and come to behave as a well-mannered, compliant member of the larger culture and of the larger Christian community. Churches of Christ began moving unmistakably toward such a position during the nineteenth century. By the middle of the twentieth century, many Churches of Christ congregations had practically completed the transition from sect to denomination. Since the sect-denomination classification is relative to time and place, one religious group can take on characteristics of a sect in one setting and those of a denomination in another, as Lorne Dawson asserts: No single group can necessarily be identified exclusively with any one label.¹⁰ Although Churches of Christ often fit this fluidity and complexity, the fact remains that the mainstream Churches of Christ moved in a decidedly denominational direction throughout the twentieth century, even as they resisted the label.

Throughout the history of Churches of Christ, there have been some—albeit a distinct minority—who understood the sociological realities of religious groups and who therefore viewed the notion of nondenominational Christianity not as something Churches of Christ could actually achieve but rather as a biblical ideal to which they might aspire. These people argued that the New Testament knows one church only, which implies that the denominational arrangement is wrong, but they refused to argue that they themselves did not partake of this sin. Among these people one finds the highest and noblest conception of the nondenominational ideal as it was understood by Churches of Christ.¹¹

The difficulty in defining the notion of nondenominational Christianity can be seen in the thought of Alexander Campbell, who time and again sought to define what the movement he led was all about without ever succeeding in fully clarifying the issue. The concept remained a two-edged sword.

On the one hand, Campbell described the notion of nondenominational Christianity with seemingly broad parameters: "The true Christian church … is composed of all those in every place that do publicly acknowledge Jesus of Nazareth as the true Messiah, and the only Saviour of men; and, building themselves upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, associate under the constitution which he himself has granted and authorized in the New Testament, and are walking in his ordinances and commandments—and of none else."¹² Accordingly, Campbell believed there were New Testament Christians scattered throughout the various denominations, and he refused to identify nondenominational Christianity with any particular sect or movement, his own included.

On the other hand, Campbell himself was not an idealized abstraction but a human being who belonged to human history. With his understanding of the New Testament as a constitution, he could not avoid defining New Testament Christianity in concrete terms, laying out its terms of admission, its organizational structure, and its order of worship. And when he did this, many of his followers inevitably identified nondenominational Christianity with the particular movement that, in the early days, they called Churches of Christ, Christian Churches, or Disciples of Christ. More than anything else, Campbell’s insistence on immersion for the forgiveness of sins and salvation encouraged that identification.¹³ While Campbell vacillated on this question throughout his career,¹⁴ many of his opponents and his followers understood him to be arguing that only those in his own movement were saved.

This was the two-edged sword of nondenominational Christianity, and the dilemma it created has always plagued Churches of Christ. On the one hand, Churches of Christ were committed at times only to the ideal of nondenominational Christianity and admitted, on that basis, that there were genuine Christians scattered throughout the denominational world. But naturally, members and leaders alike confused the ideal with their own particular movement and argued that the Church of Christ in America was not a denomination but the true church of the apostolic era. All others, according to this logic, were simply not Christians.¹⁵ In this way they created a nondenominational sect.

But because they refused to accept the notion of a nondenominational denomination, they found themselves caught in the trap of belonging to a very particular denomination while denying its denominational dimensions. The only way to resolve this dilemma was to reaffirm the original, idealized vision according to which New Testament Christians were scattered throughout the sects. Some, indeed, took this step, but they thereby robbed the flesh-and-blood reality called the Church of Christ of its exclusive character, which, as we shall see, served from the early nineteenth century as a central feature of the church’s self-identification.

Accordingly, Churches of Christ developed a peculiar vocabulary that reinforced the conviction that the Church of Christ was not a denomination but simply the one true church of the apostolic age. Churches of Christ therefore spoke of themselves as the church of Christ with a small c, signifying thereby the church universal. They routinely spoke of themselves as New Testament Christians, in contrast to the denominations. All this became orthodoxy from an early date. Already in 1860, the old Kentucky preacher John Rogers, for example, admonished his people not to speak of other denominations: "When we speak of other denominations, we place ourselves among them, as one of them. This, however, we can never do, unless we abandon the distinctive ground—the apostolic ground—the anti-sectarian ground, we have taken."¹⁶

By the 1960s, the notion that the Church of Christ was not a denomination was seldom questioned; it was simply assumed. One dissident from this orthodoxy complained that this central dogma of our brotherhood so thoroughly permeate[s] the area that its source cannot be discovered. Like the myth of white supremacy, or the sacredness of the Bible, or the existence of God, it is taken for granted and never questioned. He went on to complain of the tricky logic used to defend it.¹⁷ Indeed, that tricky logic has, in many ways, stood at the heart of Churches of Christ for almost two full centuries.

METHODOLOGY AND FRAMEWORK OF THE STORY

There are other important dimensions of this book that the reader should understand from the outset. First, this book is meant to be a descriptive and historical analysis of the character of Churches of Christ. It therefore asks, Who are these people? What made/makes them tick? What are the forces that have shaped them and made them who they are?

Second, in keeping with the intent to analyze the character of Churches of Christ, the book is primarily an intellectual history—that is, a history of the ideas that have molded and shaped the tradition. It centers the most influential preachers and writers, most of whom were White men, though chapters 6, 8, and 9 include the voices of influential women and Black leaders. Beyond intellectual history, a variety of social and cultural factors—wars, economics, religious pluralism, and democratic culture, for example—also helped shape Churches of Christ and their theology and therefore helped define the terms for many of their internecine quarrels. For this reason, we have also sought to pay serious attention to the social setting in which Churches of Christ have lived and moved and had their being.

Further, since this book focuses chiefly on the intellectual character of Churches of Christ, readers should not expect it to serve as an exhaustive history of the tradition, replete with every name, date, and event that has been in any way significant to the tradition. We provide this sort of detail only insofar as it relates to the book’s central, overarching themes.¹⁸ Some leaders typically regarded as key personalities in the movement do not appear in these pages at all. More often than not, individuals are introduced into the narrative only insofar as they contribute to a particular story and to a particular context. All individual stories are partial and not exhaustive. Some controversies long regarded as defining issues for Churches of Christ receive scant attention here, simply because they reflected rather than defined the basic character of the tradition.

This book not only focuses on the nondenominational self-identity of Churches of Christ but also seeks to explore their intellectual history by identifying three broad periods. Part 1 (The Making of a Sect) explores the nineteenth-century developments of sectarian identity. Part 2 (The Making of a Denomination) analyzes the major changes and controversies that led mainstream Churches of Christ toward a denominational identity. Part 3 (The Fragmentation of a Denomination) tells the story of the denomination’s increasing diversity from the 1960s to the 2020s.

Two points should be made regarding the nineteenth-century story. First, some have argued that the real story of Churches of Christ is a twentieth-century one. There is a sense, of course, in which that is true, since there was no recognized Church of Christ separate from the Christian Church or Disciples of Christ prior to 1906, when the United States Census listed the two denominations separately for the first time. But to argue for the irrelevance of the nineteenth century is to miss that Churches of Christ built a separate and distinct identity upon the powerful ideals of primitive and nondenominational Christianity that were articulated in the work of Stone, Campbell, and others who defined Churches of Christ as a separate and peculiar people as early as the 1830s. The burden of the entire nineteenth-century story, therefore, rests with defining and clarifying the ideal of primitive and nondenominational Christianity as the defining characteristic of this people. To ignore the nineteenth century would be to ignore the very heart and soul of the tradition and to render the rest of the story of Churches of Christ essentially absurd.

Because the nineteenth-century story is one of defining the ideal and hammering out a separate identity for Churches of Christ, it is appropriate to focus part 1 of the book on those who were most influential in carrying out those tasks. But who were these people? As W. T. Moore explained in 1909, editors of religious periodicals have wielded influence in the Stone-Campbell movement akin to bishops in episcopal denominations.¹⁹ In other words, those who exercised intellectual power in this tradition were those who brandished the pen. Further, editors were, in a very real sense, democratically chosen by the people, for their power was only as great as the length of their circulation lists. This means that editors both reflected and shaped the popular orthodoxy at any given time. For this reason, in exploring the nineteenth-century story, it is altogether appropriate to focus on the thought of the most significant editors and writers in the movement.

Part 2’s treatment of the story in the twentieth century focuses on the evolution of Churches of Christ from sect to denomination. Because no one more accurately perceived that transition than those who were still committed to the old sectarian identity, this part tells the story not only from the perspective of mainstream editors but also from the perspective of those who dissented from the emerging denominational mainstream. These dissenters included people active in the premillennial movement, the noninstitutional movement, African American Churches of Christ, the youth counterculture of the 1960s, and the International Churches of Christ. Divisions involving each of these groups together reveal the character of the new denomination via diverse angles. The intent in employing this methodology is not to criticize mainstream Churches of Christ but rather to make certain that the dissenting traditions are taken seriously. But this approach also can shed new light on the mainstream tradition in that it avoids mainstream triumphalism and entertains alternate perspectives.

Part 3 documents the fragmentation of Churches of Christ from the 1960s to the 2020s. The 1960s launched the United States into a new era of religious division in which a liberal-conservative divide in the broader culture led to a fragmentation within denominations as much as between denominations.²⁰ In other words, a conservative Baptist often came to have more in common with a conservative Churches of Christ person than with a liberal Baptist.²¹ The disagreements at the heart of the culture war came to seem impassable because the opposing sides operated with different sources of moral authority or psychological foundations of morality.²² As with nearly every denomination, the battles within Churches of Christ between groups who held very different viewpoints shaped the fragmented character of the denomination from the 1960s to the 2020s.

BRIEF INTRODUCTORY HISTORY

All this, however, should be set within the broader context of the history of Churches of Christ. For purposes of orientation, it will be useful to undertake a thumbnail sketch of the larger picture. Churches of Christ trace their American origins to two principal nineteenth-century leaders, Stone and Campbell.

Stone’s leadership dates from the famous Cane Ridge Revival of 1801, at Cane Ridge, Kentucky. Chastised by the Presbyterian Church for not adhering to its theology, Stone and five others completely broke from the Synod of Kentucky and organized the separatist Springfield Presbytery. By 1804, in the name of freedom from human institutions, they dissolved even that presbytery, declaring their intentions in The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery, a document revealing early identity markers of Churches of Christ. Having divorced themselves from Presbyterianism altogether, they then constituted themselves simply as a community of Christians. Over the next forty years, Stone attracted a sizable following, especially in southern Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and northern Alabama.²³

His leadership was characterized by several themes, one of the most important of which was surely his insistence on freedom from human traditions in religion. Like Campbell, he actively promoted the restoration of primitive Christianity as the means of uniting all Christians. But if Campbell leaned in the rationalist direction, Stone favored pietism. In addition, as we shall see in chapter 2, by the end of his life, Stone held to a profoundly apocalyptic worldview that drove him to advocate simple, ethical living; to separate himself from the prevailing values of his culture; and to hold himself aloof from militarism and politics. From 1804 to 1826, Stone solidified the movement he led principally through preaching, but from 1826 through 1844 he also edited an influential journal called Christian Messenger.

Alexander Campbell came to the United States from northern Ireland in 1809, two years after his father, Thomas, had arrived in southwest Pennsylvania. Because of conflict with his Seceder Presbyterian denomination, Thomas already had withdrawn from that body and drafted the well-known Declaration and Address (1807).²⁴ This document, which called for Christian unity through a return to the beliefs and practices of the New Testament church, charted the course for the movement the Campbells led.

But it was Alexander who emerged as the pivotal leader of the movement his father had begun. Gripped by the postmillennial anticipation of his time, Alexander reshaped his father’s agenda in the interest of the millennial age. It was his belief that the restoration of primitive Christianity would bring Christian unity, which, in turn, would bring the millennial dawn.²⁵

Especially important for Churches of Christ identity was the Christian Baptist, which Campbell edited from 1823 to 1830. In the pages of that publication Campbell regularly assaulted creeds, clerics, and denominational systems that he believed must collapse before the millennium would dawn. He especially attacked missionary societies and any ecclesiastical institutions that he thought detracted from the glory of the local congregation. Though his chief interest, even in the Christian Baptist, was unity through restoration of the ancient order and gospel, his rhetoric often sounded both sectarian and legalistic. This dimension of the early Campbell exerted a tremendous influence on Churches of Christ.

The Stone movement and the Campbell movement had so many similarities that some from the groups united in the 1830s. Their reasons for uniting were threefold: First, their discomfort over religious pluralism on the US frontier (i.e., the diversity of religious sects and denominations) provided both with part of their motivation for Christian unity.

Second, both addressed the problem of religious pluralism in a way that was common among transatlantic evangelicals: they sought unity among the various groups via a return to primitive Christianity. One finds that approach not only in Stone and Campbell but also in the closely allied movements of James O’Kelley in Virginia and Elias Smith and Abner Jones in New England, and even in Joseph Smith’s Latter-day Saints. Evangelicals in the British Isles resorted to similar primitivist and democratic efforts for the sake of uniting in interdenominational endeavors (in missions, Bible printing, benevolent societies, etc.).²⁶

Third, reflecting the democratic impulse so prominent in their time, both Stone and Campbell were driven by a passion for freedom from creeds, clerics, and ecclesiastical control. With so much in common, some among the Stone and Campbell movements formally united in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1832.

But there were differences as well. The most notable was that while Stone was a pietist who insisted that a return to apostolic holiness was essential to Christian union, Campbell was a rationalist who based Christian union on adherence to the New Testament as a kind of scientific blueprint for the church. Central to Campbell’s thought was his dependence on Enlightenment philosophy, especially the thought of John Locke and the perspectives of the Baconian school of Scottish commonsense realism. The impact that these philosophic traditions had on his thought and behavior is spelled out in more detail in chapter 1.

More than this, while Stone eventually held to an apocalyptic worldview that rendered him pessimistic about his culture and his age, Campbell tended to hold an optimistic, postmillennial perspective that rendered him an apostle not only for primitive Christianity but also for science, technology, and US civilization. His optimism became especially apparent in 1837 when he undertook a defense of American Protestantism—and so began a transition in his own thought from sect to denomination.

This shift, however, alienated many who had followed him since the Christian Baptist period—followers who well remembered his earlier denunciation of all Protestant parties. Increasingly estranged from his latter-day moderation, these people formed an early nucleus of Churches of Christ. Chapter 1 explores who some of these people were, what they taught, and why.

Within a few short years, the Stone-Campbell unity movement was pulling apart, and by 1906 the religious census of the US government recognized two denominations instead of just one: the Churches of Christ and the Disciples of Christ. Several factors precipitated the division.

In the first place, some failed to see the close relation between restoration and unity that was so apparent to Campbell and therefore tended to coalesce around one or the other of these two themes. Those who principally served the restoration ideal, and who therefore worked for the recovery of primitive Christianity, would become known exclusively as Churches of Christ, though they had counterparts in the conservative Disciples of Christ. Those whose interest was chiefly ecumenical, and who therefore worked for the unity of all Christians, would increasingly wear the label Disciples of Christ.

Second, the Civil War played an important role in helping to sectionalize the movement. When all was said and done, the Churches of Christ centered predominantly in the Upper South, while the Disciples centered predominantly in the old Campbell heartland of Kentucky and the Middle West.

Third, undergirding the division were the differences between Campbell and Stone. Campbell’s Disciples, especially following the Civil War, increasingly reflected Campbell’s commitment to progress and American civilization. But the Churches of Christ, which centered especially in Middle Tennessee, often reflected the sectarian, Stoneite commitment to the kingdom of God that would finally triumph over human progress and civilization.

The differences between the two men, however, should not be overplayed, because, to a significant extent, Campbell’s outlook tended to overshadow Stone’s from the time Campbell first visited Kentucky in 1824. From that time on, many who came out of the old Stone tradition blended Stone’s robust apocalypticism with the rationalism, legalism, and sectarianism they perceived in Campbell’s Christian Baptist. An unequal fusion of these two traditions—that of the early Campbell and that of Stone—came to define the emerging Churches of Christ.

The principal second- and third-generation leaders of the Stone-Campbell movement in Middle Tennessee—Tolbert Fanning and David Lipscomb—epitomized the emerging Churches of Christ. Both men were committed to a profoundly sectarian vision, informed both by the early Campbell and, later, by Stone. Yet most White Churches of Christ leaders embraced the racist ideas and practices of their southern culture throughout the nineteenth century, which severely limited any apocalyptic critique of culture. By World War I, most leaders among Churches of Christ renounced at least parts of the apocalyptic heritage and continued the slow transition from sect to denomination. This transition, which occupied more than a century, generated one racial division and three notable controversies between the emerging mainstream and sectarian dissenters.

The first of the sectarian controversies, triggered in part by World War I, involved premillennialism and raged from 1915 to roughly 1940, when the mainstream finally succeeded in expelling the premillennial dissidents. Since the premillennial faction perpetuated the apocalyptic perspectives of Stone to a significant extent, their expulsion symbolized not only the rejection of premillennialism by mainstream Churches of Christ but also the rejection of major components of sectarian identity rooted in an apocalyptic worldview. As leaders rejected apocalyptic thinking, it became easier for them to adopt some degree of Christian nationalism. We trace this story in chapter 3.

The second sectarian controversy, triggered in part by World War II, involved efforts to promote congregational cooperation and to create various sorts of institutions, especially related to colleges and missions after the war. Fought mainly in the late 1940s and 1950s, this battle once again resulted in the withdrawal or expulsion of the sectarians. Though mainstream Churches of Christ time and again characterized those who opposed institutionalization as unfaithful to the heritage, the truth is that these dissenters stood squarely in one set of footprints of the nineteenth-century Churches of Christ. And by the time the battle over institutions was complete, it was the mainstream—not the dissenters—who had moved most significantly from nineteenth-century roots. In place of those roots, what remained among mainstream Churches of Christ was, for the most part, an ingrained exclusivism that had severed key theological connections to the nineteenth-century heritage. Amid these changes, many mainstream Churches of Christ adopted Christian nationalism that rose to new prominence during the world wars and the Cold War. We explore these developments in chapters 4 and 5.

By the 1960s, Churches of Christ faced the third major wave of dissent, this time from disaffected and alienated youth who strongly objected to the lingering exclusivism among Churches of Christ, on the one hand, and to the peace that Churches of Christ had now made with the values of the surrounding culture on the other. The struggle between the mainstream and the dissidents involved a host of issues—race, war, gender, generational differences, the Holy Spirit, and the nature of the Bible, to name a few. But to the new denominational mainstream and to the sectarian right wing that still persisted, the struggle was over one thing only: liberalism. Chapter 7 explores all of this.

The fourth and most pernicious major division—the racial division—within Churches of Christ was not fully acknowledged until the 1960s, thanks to Black and White leaders and historians who forced Churches of Christ to face historical facts.²⁷ But the racial division chronologically preceded the other three divisions. The historical reckoning with this division in recent decades has revealed the deep indebtedness of White Churches of Christ to American cultural norms throughout the twentieth century. Churches of Christ emerged from the Civil War with a distinctly southern character, which included accommodation of the culture’s racist ideas and practices most concretely expressed in the White-imposed separation of institutions, including congregations, by race, despite protest from some leaders. That is, White Churches of Christ congregations and institutions usually refused to fellowship in the same physical space with Black people. Although there were individual exceptions all the time, there were almost no mixed-race congregations until the 1960s.

Black Churches of Christ leaders responded to the racist division of all the institutions (congregations, schools, lectureships, orphanages, etc.) in different ways, moving along a spectrum from accommodation to protest, until the late 1960s when Black Churches of Christ finally chose to part ways with White Churches of Christ due to continued paternalism, racism, and a general lack of understanding of the Black experience among most White people. By 2018, Black Churches of Christ made up nearly 14 percent of Churches of Christ adherents.²⁸ Chapter 6 tells the story of segregation and independence of Black Churches of Christ.

Chapters 7 to 9 explore the story of fragmentation from the 1960s to the 2020s, during which Churches of Christ experienced an identity crisis that has no clear end in sight. Chapter 7 focuses on the 1960s and 1970s, when a progressive Left emerged in critical response to traditional Churches of Christ stances that seemed ethically and theologically unable to adapt to the post-1960s world. A conservative Right coalesced to fight against the perceived menace of liberalism on the left.

Chapter 8 then examines new developments from the 1970s through the 1990s in which various means of renewal, reform, and resistance to change captured the attention of a movement that had not only stopped growing but had lost clarity of self-understanding amid the recognition of Churches of Christ denominational identity. Some questioned traditional practices and beliefs while others fortified traditional positions. Several responses to the era’s challenges reveal the increasing fragmentation of the denomination.

Finally, chapter 9 looks at developments in character and identity formation in the twenty-first century. A steady decline in membership over the first two decades of the new century lingered as an angst-inducing, ever-present reality. Also key to discussions about character and identity was the continued internal fragmentation intensified by society’s culture war. Churches of Christ leaders from different groups had very different opinions about Christian nationalism, women in leadership, ecumenism, evangelicalism, Black Lives Matter, civil rights, sexuality, and so on. Technological developments provided every individual with immediate access to an unprecedented number of voices on every possible issue. The traditional sources of identity formation (i.e., journals, lectureships, colleges, and radio and television programs) remained, but an increasing number of influences on the denomination led to a deepening fragmentation of Churches of Christ in the twenty-first century.

IDENTIFYING THE EARLY CHURCH OF CHRIST SECT

For most of the nineteenth century, the terms Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ, and Christian Church were used more or less interchangeably. But there is at least one notable exception to this pattern: in Middle Tennessee, a region long dominated by the work of Stone, the common designation from a very early date was Church of Christ. Stone opposed the term Disciples of Christ as a designation for this movement and strongly favored the labels Christian when applied to individuals and Churches of Christ when applied to congregations. On the masthead of virtually every issue of the Christian Messenger, which Stone published from 1826 to 1844, he identified himself as an elder in the Church of Christ.²⁹ By the 1840s, Church of Christ was becoming the standard designation for churches in this region. This explains, for example, why John R. Howard, in defending the true church in 1848 (see chap. 1), referred to it simply as the Church of Christ.

Further, Church of Christ rapidly became the standard designation for the sectarian wing of the Stone-Campbell movement throughout the South. In this connection, the testimony of the dentist-evangelist B. F. Hall is important. Hall identified himself with the Stone movement in 1820, when he responded to the preaching of the influential Kentucky preacher John Rogers.³⁰ He shifted his allegiance to Campbell in 1826, however, when he read Campbell’s debate with W. L. McCalla. Nonetheless, Hall used the designation Church of Christ wherever he preached for the remainder of his life.³¹

The fundamental point, then, is this: from the 1840s, if not before, we can trace the beginnings of an emerging sect called the Church of Christ. This sect was still linked to Campbell’s Disciples of Christ, to be sure, but it was far more concerned with questions regarding the true church and the ancient order than it was with ecumenicity or human progress. Increasingly, therefore, it was embarking on paths fundamentally different from those charted by Campbell.

The Disciples of Christ essentially are the flesh-and-blood embodiment of a denominational ideal that was present in the mind of Campbell from the beginning of his reform—an ideal found especially in his emphasis on Christian unity and in his optimistic, postmillennial assessment of human progress and US culture. On the other hand, Churches of Christ essentially are the flesh-and-blood embodiment of a sectarian ideal that was present not only in the mind of Campbell but also in the mind of Stone—at least in the Middle Tennessee expression of Churches of Christ.

It is true that it took fifty or more years for other Americans—and even for many within the movement—to discover that by 1906 there were two denominations where earlier there had seemed to be only one. But